


Dissolution

by Lythlyra



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lythlyra/pseuds/Lythlyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does not linger on gratitude and sentiment. When his eyes open, when feeling returns to his body, he is leaving the stranger's old hovel and retracing his steps. (Fenris/Anders slash.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissolution

**Author's Note:**

> I was kicking around ideas of what to do for Fenders Friday on Tumblr, and eventually, I remembered a sketch Neonowls did a while back. I took inspiration from her basic idea, ran with it, and typed it up quickly. I'll probably clean this up later.

They sleep near an outcrop of rocks, in its shadows where it feels safe and calm and quiet.

And it's a lie, a farce, because they come and take him in the night, and Fenris cannot tear through them when they confuse the lyrium, the magic, in his very skin, and he cannot best them when they outnumber and flank and overwhelm.

He is left for dead, and it's only a stranger who passes later, peddling salves and poultices, that keeps his fate from being that of so many others.

He does not linger on gratitude and sentiment. When his eyes open, when feeling returns to his body, he is leaving the stranger's old hovel and retracing his steps.

The Circles are gone, unable to hold against the tide of rebellion and change; there are only a few places Anders can truly be held.

\---

It takes days to travel to the nearest encampment, and he finds it in ruins.

Mages. They are fighting back or taking the fight to the templars -- Fenris can't tell -- but the chaos beckons, and not for the first time, he finds himself raising his blade in defense of the only thing he _hates_ to save the only thing he _loves_ , who is, cruelly and infuriatingly, a part of their lot.

The encampment is burning when the building at the center is breached, and he knows he has to find the mage before the flames or the fighting make it more treacherous than it already is.

He breaks off from the pack as suddenly as he shows up. He spends far too long scouring dark corridors and empty rooms, fighting guards and relieving them of their keys, but he finds the holding cells at last.

And inside them, a familiar coat of dark, shadowed feathers.

"Mage," he hisses, fumbling with the locks. They finally give.

Anders stirs, standing, but that's where he stops, even as Fenris stalks forward.

"You are here."

And it's wrong. The tone, the set of his posture, the way he wears that damnable coat.

He only knows _why_ when they are finally face to face, when he can stare into the nothingness for himself.

The warmth extinguished. The spark of wit and fire gone. The brand and its cruel lines, radiating from the center of his forehead.

Fenris snarls, reaching his armored hands to curl his palms over the shape of either shoulder, to draw him closer.

The look Anders offers him is the same as before, blank, unflappable, an endless and unnatural patience.

"You are distressed." It's such a keen observation, cold and logical and clinically efficient, that it sparks fury hot and fresh beneath Fenris' skin.

"What have they-- I-- No."

The words wither, dissolve, scatter. In their wake, he can taste only bitterness and fear and his own failure on his tongue.

"I will not allow this."

And he is hauling him through halls, through flames, through underbrush and over rocks; he runs, _they_ run, as if distance will change the course of the night.

\---

They are both silent until breathlessness, weariness, forces them to rest among a thicket of overgrown trees, and it's then that he can no longer outrun what he already _knows_.

This thing, this facade, its detachment -- it wears Anders' skin, and it draws on his voice, and it takes pieces of Fenris with it.

But something else -- something between spirit and demon -- masquerades in the same way. It's with a desperate, fierce hope that he remembers, that he asks. "The spirit, mage. What has become of it?"

The stare that meets him doesn't alter with thought or circumstance; Anders stares after him, accepting. "It was necessary for me to be contained. In the process, the spirit was dissolved."

Destroyed. Severed under the same power that defies the connection of mages and the Fade.

There is _nothing_ left of what he knows.

Fenris paces, cagey and volatile, a restlessness that fights the inevitable that chases at his heels with each step.

And he's watched the entire time.

He's watched as the night wanes.

He's watched as he eventually stills, slumping against the base of a tree and curling a fist against his mouth.

He's watched when, as the first rays of light break over the horizon, he draws closer and pulls Anders to a stand.

"I am sorry," he murmurs, a whispered thing against the shell of the mage's ear. Holding Anders here, now, is like holding a statue, impassive, hollow.

It's a whisper, a flash of an idea, that unfurls and unwinds until it's all he can think, an insidious mantra echoing in his head, what he already knows to be true, what he recalls the mage proclaiming in any number of his impassioned tirades involving the Gallows: _death before Tranquility._

 _This_ is all he can offer.

Perhaps this is all he has ever been able to give.

When the brands flare, humming with the ferocity of their energy -- when it pools at the hand that drives through flesh and bone and purchases on a fluttering heart, ravaging it in an iron grasp -- the last thing Fenris hears is the placid reassurance that his apology isn't needed.


End file.
